[aaronatthedoublef]

Hold on now BA- you can't find anyone to take some spare chocolate cake off you hands?

[aaronatthedoublef]

My favorite cake comes from Rosie's baking book. It's a sour cream chocolate cake with a chocolate frosting that uses evaporated milk, unsweetened and semi sweet chocolate, and sugar. You melt the chocolate and throw all the ingredients in the blender until mixed. I started add the sugar to the evaporated milk first and heating both then mixing before adding to the melted chocolate. This seemed to fix the grit problem.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA, nice cake. Is it a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting? I have a similar recipe for ganache frosting but it calls for granulated sugar. If you follow the recipe (I stopped) it can be kind of gritty. I bet your powdered sugar would fix that.

I made my first test batch of hand pies. I made a KA recipe with blueberries and a sour cream pie dough. Sour cream is the liquid. I only had six but the recipe said I should have eight. The blueberry filling is nice and basically a quick preserve. I can probably sub in strawberries too. I will also try to figure out how to make some pies like chess pies and pumpkin pies into hand pies. The pies have nice layering. I'll work on the yield. I also need to work on scaling - can I mix pie dough in a stand mixer?

Next are macarons. The brewery wants to use macarons as a GF alternative. But they also want to package three different cookies together. I've checked with some nutritionist friends and we cannot package GF and non-GF together and call it GF.

I'm thinking a chocolate chip cookie, a shortbread cookie, and a chocolate chip cookie to start.

I've started using my couche for my ciabatta. I'm still not getting a high enough rise. I may start doing a stretch and fold to increase integrity a little.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Awesome story! When I moved to CT the first time I live a few miles from the Pepperidge Farms bakery. It smelled great and I could always pick up inexpensive loaves of their bread.

[aaronatthedoublef]

At Costco and WF they are back to pre-surge prices. Last week I bought five dozen large white for $22.59 at Costco. One man was stunned by the price but I pointed out that was under $5/dozen. 18 large white eggs were $7.99. Yesterday WF cage free large brown eggs were $5.95.

Is demand down now? People here are already buying for Easter which puts a premium on white eggs. It's the only time during the year our local WFs sell white eggs.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Nice looking banana bread!

I made challah to give away this week and I just made batches of molasses cookies and chocolate chip cookies. I pitched adding dessert to a local brewery and I have a meeting with their COO this afternoon. I decided to bring some samples.

The challah rose this time. Hooray! As I was making it some caterers came into the kitchen with me. I always make extra so I gave them a couple of rolls (it is mean to bake bread around people and not offer them some!). They asked me if I was available on weekdays and took my contact info. We'll see where it goes.

I bought the St. Germain couche on Amazon. I'm going to use it next time I make ciabatta. It should be this weekend. Henry is home and he eats a lot of bread!

If nothing else, scalding milk will reduce some of the water in milk. This will concentrate other things, like the sugars. I boil my cider for challah. It's pasteurized but boiling makes the flavor stronger.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. I saw that one and it is the most expensive. It is also linen.

I'll ask what to look for in a couche. I could also always ask on the BBGA.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Len - looks great. And I refer to BBA regularly although I've yet to bake a loaf from it. If you want to make a 4 or 6 strand braid it has great directions, for example. And there are some fun stories in it too.

Mike - thanks for the tips on the baking steel. I just don't want to shell out the money for it right now. I remembered how we made pizza at our college pub and I may try a variation on that. We would stretch the dough then put it in an oiled pan. The pan went in the deck oven. After some amount of time we would take it out of the pan and finish it on the deck.

I must have made hundreds of those pizzas over four years!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Choco, the braid is lovely. I always made calzoni because I was too lazy to make stromboli.

Believe it or not. sometimes you can buy refurbished goods for good prices from Amazon. The least expensive I found there was $70. You might do better. I've had good luck there buying refurbed computers. They are a couple of years behind the latest model but they are perfect for middle school.

BA & Joan, thanks. I always keep my yeast in the freezer and theoretically it should have been good. It was less than a year old.

I haven't proofed my yeast since I switched from active to instant. I also never proofed bread dough at bakeries. I usually mix my liquids at home - apple cider, eggs, oil, and honey. Maybe I'll reserve some cider and proof my yeast next time.

I'm a firm believer that there is no "perfect" pizza, just what you like. I have been on a quest for a long time to make a good, Chicago thin. This is close. Some people told me I need a steel instead of a stone but that is an expensive upgrade!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks for the lessons on chickens. It makes sense that egg layers are not eating chickens.

So if this is affecting egg laying flocks but not eating flocks it would be interesting to know why. And if it is affecting eating flocks why hasn't the price gone up?

We have a family chickenologist I could ask but that's another story.

[aaronatthedoublef]

My last eggs were $6.99 for two dozen at Costco. What's interesting here is that eggs have gone up but not chicken. Can farmers sell chicken they killed to prevent the spread of bird flu?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Lots of baking the last couple of weeks...

I've started to try using my mixer for bread to see if it makes a difference with some interesting results. I tried my ciabatta dough. It is 87% hydration. It mixed nicely but never cleaned the sides of the bowl. It was stickier than when I hand mix it but the buns came out fine. This week I dropped the hydration to 80. I'm going to make some buns tonight so I'll see how they come out.

I've been making two pizza doughs - a "New Haven" dough which is just a standard, flour, yeast, water, & salt dough. It's what I used to make when I started making pizza. The family likes it although the boys like my multi-grain pizza dough better. My MG dough was originally 70% hydration. In an effort to get a crisper crust I dropped it to 55%. I realized I was trying to dry out a wet dough. The pizzas were not soggy at all, even the veggie pizza with extra sauce and lots of veggies. I think next time I'll start it on an oiled pan to get some oil on the crust before I put it onto the stone. This should crisp it up some more.

I made challah last week and it didn't rise. Not sure what went wrong. It was baked all the way through and tasted good. The rolls I make for the folks who work in the office were all gone in 15 minutes so they still tasted good. But when I broke one open I could see where it didn't rise. But it was cooked all the way through. Not sure what went wrong. Maybe my yeast was dead. I decided order and try some osmotolerant yeast too, just to see if it makes a difference next time.

I made the challah by hand because I am making about 17 lbs.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Happy belated birthday BA!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Here in CT, at least, while egg prices are up, other baking staples have dropped. Costco vanilla is $9.99 a pint. And I was stunned the other day when KAB bread flour was $5.59/5 lbs. at Whole Foods. It hasn't been that cheap in years. It's still more expensive than Costco which is $7.99 for 10 lbs.

Sugar has dropped some too. WW flour is still up there.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. Whole Foods had 18 large eggs, organic, outdoor access for $6.59 today.

I am not sure how they can guarantee that opportunistic omnivores like chickens can be guaranteed organic if they are allowed to roam about.

You should actually never break the shell on the edge of a bowl. You should break it on the flat of the table. Using a bowl pushes the shell in to the yolk and white and the shell is the part most likely to have salmonella. Although according to my chickenologist sister-in-law grocery store eggs have their shells scoured to clean them and rarely have salmonella.

When I worked in my first bakery they would time me to see how quickly I could crack eggs. Or maybe it was just a little hazing. But they were good, kind teachers and I am still friends with them.

I love cracking eggs. It's sort of a little bit of meditation.

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